


The Words that Were

by OddityBoddity



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Getting Better Bucky Barnes, Hurt Bucky Barnes, M/M, No Smut, Panic Attacks, Past Sexual Abuse, Past physical abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Harm, So much angst, Stockholm Syndrome, Therapy, Vomiting, glimmer of light at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 14:43:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1652411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddityBoddity/pseuds/OddityBoddity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is starting to remember the things he'd really rather keep forgetting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Words that Were

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Archibald MacLeish's poem Epistle To Be Left in the Earth:
> 
> "...Make in your mouths the words that were our names  
> I will tell you all we have learned  
> I will tell you everything."

 

A couple weeks ago, Steve manhandled a bed into what used to be an empty room, and now he’s dossing there.

At first Bucky didn’t like the constant presence of another person, but he’s gotten used to it now. Sometimes they talk. Well, Steve talks, and sometimes he waits as if he’s hoping Bucky’s going to say something too, but Bucky doesn’t care much for talking.

It’s the weekend and it’s early and Steve is still tucked up in bed. Bucky is brewing coffee. This is the rule: The first person who gets up makes the coffee, and the last one makes breakfast. Steve suggested it. He suspects it’s because he doesn’t really trust Bucky yet. Not even in the kitchen. Not even with a little one-inch paring knife. Well, can’t blame him. Bucky did put three bullets in him not all that long ago. Besides, he’s not sure if he trusts himself either.

He makes the coffee and then slopes around the apartment till it’s ready. He’s pouring out a cup of coffee when something wet falls onto his hand. A big, fat drop of blood. His nose is bleeding. Well, the air is dry in the tower, and he can’t remember the last time he was outside. Months ago maybe. He wipes the blood away. Washes his hands. It’s fine.

Then everything falls away. Then he remembers with perfect clarity the voice of the old man praying, whispering softly in German, suddenly silenced by the bark of a pistol.

He grips the counter top. It’s dark and smooth and flecked with quartz. His heart starts to calm. Just a nose bleed. It’s nothing. It’s fine. He goes to take a deep breath and coughs. Blood spatters on the granite counter, the coffee mug. He has it on his hands. His face.

 _Calm down. Calm down. Calm the fuck down._ He tries to say it, to make it an order, but the words jam in his throat. It’s because his lungs aren’t working right. He can’t breathe. They must be filling up with blood. The blood that’s all over the counter and all over him. He’s soaked in it. He drags in air, not enough, tries the words but it’s like there’s something stopping his mouth nothing comes out _._

The old man’s voice is soft and calm, whispering the Lord's Prayer. He is the last, the last of the four of them. None of them screamed or cried, not even the children. Bucky hears the bark of the pistol; warm blood splatters on his face. He jerks his head back and the kitchen comes swimming into focus again.  


He’s got his hand over his mouth, pressing on it, to stifle the little noises coming out. His hands are streaked with a blood, and there’s a speck or two on the counter.

He goes to the bathroom, turns on the taps, and pukes a couple times.

 

 

A doctor comes around a few days later. Turns out Steve’s set up an appointment. It’s a Tuesday morning. Steve is out doing whatever it is he does in the day, and the sun is sliding through the windows. The apartment is warm and quiet.

The doctor is a short fella, red hair softening to blond. He’s got a slight barrel chest, a limp from the injury that got him invalided out, and a degree. He sits in the armchair and Bucky sits on the couch and they talk. At first they just trade facts and it’s kind of like a debrief.

“You know,” the doctor says, looking over his glasses at Bucky like a man who sees through _all_ the shit, “you don’t have to do this.You can stop at any time.”

“Sure,” Bucky tells him. Seems like the kinda thing he’d want to hear.

“Do you want to talk about nightmares?”

“Steve tell you about that?”

“No. But it’s very common.” The doctor is placid. “Are you having nightmares?”

“Yes.”

“Every night?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when you wake up, it may help to say out loud where you are, what year it is, and to remind yourself that you’re safe.”

Seems stupid. The whole thing seems stupid.

 

“Waste of money,” he tells Steve afterward.

But at night, at night it’s different. That night he says, _Stark Tower, 2014, safe,_ like a prayer after every waking, and then lies there repeating it over and over again the same way he once said his rank and his serial number. Something about the sound of his own voice. He chants until his heartbeat slows and his breathing evens out and he hears Steve’s footsteps retreating.

 

“That quack,” Bucky says over breakfast the next morning. He doesn’t like to ask for anything. Everything he’s got is already more than he deserves. But Steve keeps looking at him and frowning when he thinks Bucky won’t notice, and Bucky knows it’s because his mouth his all bruised up. Sometimes he covers his mouth to stop the noises he’s making, and lately he’s been bruising it. “Is it… I mean, can I talk to him again?”

Steve sets it up, and after that he starts having regular appointments.

 

 

Sometimes the doctor says, “How do you feel about that?” when they talk about Hydra. Bucky’s got an answer, but it’s not the kind of thing you say. You don’t say, _I kind of miss them._ You don’t admit that you feel like you owe the enemy something because they could have killed you but they didn’t. That makes you a collaborator. That’s sick. That’s fucked. You don’t tell anyone shit like that.

Today they talk about cryo. Bucky unspools a little. He talks about the chair they put him in, the mouth-guard he bit down on, mask he wore. When the doctor asks him _how do you feel about that_ , his throat closes up.

 _You want that mask off? You gonna be a good boy?_ Some voice out of memory best forgotten comes whispering in his ear. His skin crawls. _Good boy._

“James?” the doctor says quietly. “Are you alright?”

He nods, pushing his hand hard against his lips. He doesn’t want them to bleed; he doesn’t like the taste of blood. He doesn’t want to puke either. He just wants it to be over.

“Would you like to say something?”

When he’s sure he’s not going to throw up, he takes his hand away from his mouth. “I’m not a good boy,” he whispers. “And I don’t think you can fix it.”

The doctor gives him a long look. Not pitying, not cool. Steady and calm. “I’m not fixing it,” he says. “You are.”

 

 

They are on the balcony. It’s the first time he’s been outside in months. It’s almost summer, the breeze is warm, and with the breeze come the birds. Sparrows. Bold little balls of brown fluff. They stare at him while he eats his toast and when they think he’s not looking, they steal crumbs. He likes them. He watches one go hopping across the rail, leaving little wet footprints on the metal.

“Sam told me the dreams might get worse as you get more memories back,” Steve says. It’s the understatement of the century. “You wanna talk about it?”

“No."

A flicker of exhausted frustration, quickly smoothed away. He looks at Steve a while and Steve pretends to be taking in the view.

He would like to tell Steve to give it up. Hydra broke his brain and he’s never going to get any better. He should dump Bucky somewhere. Maybe in a sack in the river. Let him fade like an old photograph. Forget him. It’s only fair.

Steve leans against the rail and the sparrows fly up to safety. Bucky flicks crumbs down where the birds can get them later.

“When you’re better, Tony wants to have a look at your arm,” he says.

He’s never going to be better. There are some things he’s never going to talk about. This Tony guy is in for a long fucking wait.

 

 

Next week, the doctor brings a big envelope with him. He gives it to Bucky at the end of their session. “This is for you,” he says. “They’re copies, so they’re yours to keep.”

Bucky looks at the envelope. Someone has written _Winter Soldier_ in thick black marker and sealed it _._ That night, when Steve goes out and he’s alone, he takes the envelope from where he hid it and goes out to the living room. He drops onto the couch, tears open the seal, and spends a whole evening looking through the contents.

Now he knows who Steve’s friend Tony is. It’s Tony Stark, and he’s the image of his dead dad. Bucky reads the whole Stark dossier and looks through all the pictures a couple times and then puts it back down. It rests open, on top of the three-inch stack of case reports just as horrible and detailed as that one. He picks up the next. And the next. Sometime near midnight, he finds the German family. In the photos they lie tumbled against one another like discarded dolls. It is exactly as he remembers.

He makes it, _just_ makes it, to the bathroom before he’s heaving up everything he’s ever eaten. Then he’s arching over the toilet in a spasm of agony and there’s nothing but thick yellow blobs coming out. After, he lies down on the cool tile floor. When he starts crying he covers his mouth. He has to do it hard. You never know who’s listening.

It’s a lot later before he can get himself together, wash his face, rinse the bile from his mouth. Steve is back, his coat still swinging precariously on the back of one of the bar stools at the counter. Steve himself is in the living room. He’s staring with an expression of horror at the dossiers spread out on the coffee table. Well, Bucky can’t blame him. They are pretty horrible.

“Where did you even get this stuff?” Steve whispers.

“The doctor brought it. He brought all of them.” Bucky goes to the couch and sinks down. He feels like a dishcloth somebody wrung out too hard. “He said he wanted me to have my own copies.”

“Why?” Steve whispers. He looks at Bucky for the first time and his mouth, already hanging open, widens just a fraction. Bucky turns his head.

“It’s fine,” he says, but Steve touches the marks.

“Jesus, Buck,” he whispers. “Did you do this? Your mouth’s bleeding.”

Bucky holds still. You don’t move when someone is touching your mouth. You don’t make sounds. You do as you’re told. You wait till its over.

 

 

He’s angry about the dossiers and he hasn’t slept, he can’t remember the last fucking time he slept. When the doctor comes the next time, he snaps at him like a dog. “Why did you bring me those files?”

The doctor shifts a little in the chair, still settling. He looks at Bucky with a mild sort of interest. “Did you read them?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you think of them?”

“What do you think?” he’s angry, his voice is loud. “What, I’m going to like them? I’m going put them up on my wall? Maybe Steve’ll buy me some frames for them or something? They made me sick.”

The doctor nods.

“I mean, Jesus Christ. Who could do that sort of shit?”

Bucky doesn’t normally ask the questions. Normally it’s the doctor who leans forward and asks about feelings and memories and would he like to talk now? Normally Bucky’s pretty quiet. But the dossiers feel like a punch in the gut, he wasn’t ready to see what was inside of them. He wasn’t ready to know everything he’d done. “That family in Germany. The _kids_.” He hears the distress in his voice. “Who would do something like that?”

“I don’t know,” says the doctor quietly. “Who would do something like that?”

“I don’t know,” he shouts back. “I don’t know. A fucking monster would do something like that. A _sick_ fucking _monster_.”

He loses his breath all of a sudden and when he drags in a lung full of air he makes a wretched sound, an animal sound. He knows that noise, he’s made it before; it is a noise that is not allowed and he must stop making it. It comes once more, not as loud as the first time, before he can make the sounds stop. He wipes the tears and the snot and spit from his face and takes in a few more shuddering breaths.

“I didn’t want to,” he says when he’s breathing normally again. His voice is quiet now, not much above a whisper. He looks at his mismatched hands and not the doctor. “I swear to God I didn’t want to.”

“But nobody cared what you wanted, did they?”

“No.”

“And there were lots of things you had to do, weren’t there? Even though you didn’t want to?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still think you’re a monster?”

He doesn’t have an answer.

 

 

He has bad nights and good nights and tonight is a bad one.

Sometime just after nightfall, a storm rolled into New York. The sky is thick and black, the underbelly of the clouds illuminated by skyscraper light. It’s a new building but the wind still makes the windows flex. He’s standing at the window watching the rain go sheeting onto rooftops when a _bang_ echoes through the apartment. Somewhere, the wind has ripped a door free and it’s swinging on its hinges. _Bang, bang_. Metal, with a hollow cavity behind it. The elevator room, maybe. A service area. _Bang_ like gunshots _bang_ like explosions, _bang bang bang,_ like blows to the head.

 _Tower, 2014, safe,_ he whispers, but he’s going down into fear and the sound of his own voice isn’t enough to stop the slide. _Bang_ like doors bursting open. _Bang, bang_ , like surgical instruments hitting an aluminum tray.

Oh god.

Steve is near by. If he can just get to Steve. He doesn’t have to ask for anything, won’t even have to wake him up, it’d be enough to just be in the presence of someone who is not trying to hurt him.

He backs away from the window, because a part of him is certain that the banging thing is going to come through it. He finds the wall with his fingers, sides down, pushes open the door. From the corner of his eye he can see Steve lying on his side, mouth half open, hear the big sighs of deep sleep. It’s a small room, dark and safe inside. He pushes himself into shadows, away from the noise, to where the bed and the wall join up. He doesn’t mean to make noise. He’s being stupid, there’s nothing to be afraid of. But the sounds are coming out anyway, those terrible animal sounds. Steve’s eyes flutter open and then fix on him and go wide.

“Buck?” he asks, not moving, carefully not moving. “You ok?”

 _Bang,_ the swinging doors hitting the tiled wall. _Bang, bang._ Instruments falling onto the tray. The bone saw is next. He shouldn’t be awake for this. No one should be awake for this. Oh god. _Oh god._ “Oh god, please,” he whispers. “Please stop. I’m awake! Please! _Please!_ ” 

_I can’t work with all that fucking screaming. Somebody shut him up._

_Please!_ They put something in his mouth and he gags on it, can’t breathe enough around it, he’s going to break his teeth on it. _Please!_ The bone saw, the saw, _the saw_.

Steve is at the foot of the bed, hands extended. “Hey, it’s all right, you’re safe.”

He didn’t mean to wake Steve. He didn’t mean to make so much noise. He only wanted it to be over. Now he’s been screaming and that’s not allowed. Now they’re going to cover his face with the mask and he’ll suffocate.

Steve touches his shoulder, his good shoulder. There’s no blood, no hacked red muscle, no pearl-white of bone. The pain in his shoulder is the old pain of an injury badly mended. The room filled with ambient light. It must be late. So late. “You’re in Stark Tower. It’s 2014,” Steve says. His voice is soft and low and calm. “You’re safe.”

He heaves in a couple breaths. A couple more. Steve’s arms close around him like walls and the banging of the door is just the banging of the door, and the storm is trapped outside. The fear is draining away.

“You’re safe,” Steve says. Bucky nods. The arms don’t relax and he’s glad of it. Desperately, pathetically glad. He’s shivering, the memory still sharp as glass.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sagging as the tension runs out of him. The storm howls and the door crashes, but it’s a distant sound. Steve’s heartbeat is steady and loud in his ear. He knows he should move but he can’t bring himself to. “I didn’t mean to wake you up. I’m sorry.”

He straightens up, and Steve’s arms slide away.

“It’s fine,” Steve tells him, “it’s ok.”

“I should get out of here,” he says. But he hesitates. Doesn’t want to be alone.

“The thing,” Steve says very quietly, very deliberately, “the thing is, you don’t have to.”

The words are like an echo of something that Bucky can’t quite make out. A memory he can’t quite get to. Something that he badly wants to recall.

“Why did you say that?” he asks. “Have you’ve said that before?”

“Not me,” Steve answers. He smiles, it’s a sad sort of smile. He looks tired. “You did. You said it to me. A long time ago.”

A part of Bucky has never really believed there was a time before the mouthguard that choked him, the surgeon who called him a good boy, the muzzle they put over his face. Sometimes if he wonders if this is a fantasy that he’s constructed to make the pain go away, and the things Steve calls memories are the real world seeping in. But sometimes Steve says things and they fit like a key; The nickname that he goes by, that _to the end of the line_ thing, and this now. This too.

“You can stay, if you want.”

Bucky nods, lets his forehead rest on that shoulder again. Something knotted in his chest is easing just a little. “Ok,” he says.

 

 

It’s high summer and the windows are thrown as wide as they will go. The door to the balcony stands half-way open, and the sparrows are cleaning up the crumbs Bucky left for them. The doctor sits sweating a little in his pink button-up shirt.

“I want to ask you a question,” Bucky says. The doctor inclines his head. “Why did they cover up my face?”

The doctor shrugs. “Why do you suppose?”

“No, I’m asking you. You’re the one with the degree in people’s brains. Why would they do that?”

“Well,” the doctor says, shifting where he sits. “I don’t think it’s possible to know the motives of people who aren’t here to be asked. But I can make something up if you’d like.”

Bucky looks down at his hands. He opens his mouth and then closes it.

“Do you know why they covered your face?” the doctor asks him quietly.

He nods.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

“I…” it’s not easy to say it at first, but once he’s started the words tumble out. “I used to scream,” he says.

“Do you want to talk about that?”

He licks his lips. He nods. “Yes,” he whispers.

Everything he thought he’d never say. It takes _hours_.

 

He’s exhausted afterward. Lies on the couch watching the sparrows and dozing. Steve comes in some time when the view is almost all in shadow, sets down his bag and the coat he took even though it’s August.

“Buck?” he calls.

“On the couch,” Bucky answers. Steve comes over and looks down. Hair golden in the sunlight, all screwed up from being squashed. He’s got a stain like a watercolour smear around his left eye. Takes effort to give Captain America a shiner, Bucky should know.

“You been sleeping?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, a little.” He sits up. “You look like hell,” he says. Steve laughs.

“You’re one to talk.”

“You need a steak on that eye.”

For a second he thinks Steve’s going to protest, but instead he sits down. Bucky goes hunting through the fridge.

 

 

It’s cool and grey the morning that his arm breaks.

He’s just taking the milk out of the fridge when something snaps and his arm stops working. Both he and Steve stare at the machinery. He tries to put the milk down but the angle of the arm maxes out at about 45 degrees and he can’t do it. Steve takes the milk out of his hand and gets Jarvis to call Tony. Soon Bucky is eating cereal with one hand while Tony is taking apart his other arm.

It occurs to Bucky that he hasn’t seen Tony since he saw the dossier. And it occurs to him that Tony probably knows what the Winter Soldier took from him. Maybe he’s known all along. Maybe he’s known all along and still put him up here in the safety of Stark Tower. He puts down his spoon and looks at Tony, who’s face-deep in the workings of arm.

“Buck?” Steve says in that very quiet _don’t startle the crazy guy_ voice he gets when he thinks Bucky’s about to do something violent or stupid or both. Tony must know that tone too, because his hands freeze, the tiny screwdriver poised just over the tiny screw. He doesn’t move his head, just his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says.

Tony straightens up and looks Bucky in the face. “Good,” he says. Then he leans back to squint at that tiny screw head some more.

Steve starts chewing again. Chewing the way you do when you don’t want to make too much noise. Which always makes more noise than regular chewing. The Cap’n Crunch probably doesn’t help.

“Good,” Tony says again, talking into Bucky’s arm. “That means Cap is right and you’re not the irredeemable son of a bitch everybody thinks you are.”

“Tony,” Steve says quietly.

“Am I not fixing his arm right now?” Tony asks, giving a flat kind of look to Steve. He finishes with the screw and then closes up the panel. “You snapped a tendon,” he tells Bucky. “Too much action and not enough maintenance.” He digs into the tool kit and pulls out a long, slim rod. He prods something inside Bucky’s arm and the fingers twitch. “That hurt?” Tony asks.

“No,” he says.

He makes Bucky’s fingers twitch again, then takes out a slim copper cable, frayed like a brush where it broke.

Steve gets up and takes their bowls to the sink and then returns, grimacing at the sight of Bucky’s partially disassembled arm. Bucky’s seen that kind of look before. How many black eyes did Steve soothe with a cold cloth? How many bruised jaws? How many times did he make that face at Bucky just before some kind of admonishment? _You don’t have to fight you know, sometimes you can walk away_. It must have happened a lot because Bucky can remember a half dozen times at least.

Tony tightens the new wire in place. “That’s probably-“ it snaps with a _plink._ “Or not.”

“That’s not good, is it?” Steve asks.

"Sub-optimal," he agrees. He taps the arm casing with the tool in his hand. “The whole interior’s in pretty bad shape,” he says. “I should build him a new arm. I can fix this one but it’s pretty damaged. It’s never going to be the same.”

“Story of my life,” Bucky says. Steve turns his head and gives Bucky a strange look. Bucky can’t remember the last time he smiled. He gives it a try.

 

 


End file.
